Hamilton pips Verstappen to Hungarian GP pole position

F1 Grand Prix, GP Hungary, Hungaroring

Lewis Hamilton surprised friend and foe by taking pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Three hundredths were enough to leave Verstappen disappointingly blaming varying car balance. Norris and Piastri will make for an papaya second row as McLaren's surge continues.

A test for a different tyre allocation this weekend meant that qualifying went underway with everybody running the hard Pirelli tyres. Q2 is set to be competed on medium tyres and Q3 uniquely on the soft compound tyres.

Sergio Perez was one of the first out on track, trying to benefit from the early minutes to get a banker in. It was fastest when he did the lap but the Mexican Red Bull driver soon retrograded to 6th before jumping up again to second with his second flyer after a cooldown lap. Valtteri Bottas meanwhile enjoyed a great Hungarian GP weekend thus far and was fastest with both of his timed laps.

Oscar Piastri followed up in 4th, ahead of russell, Alonso, Hamilton, Norris, Zhou and Gasly.

About halfway in the session neither Williams had set a competitive time, Tsunoda and Ricciardo were 17th and 18th while Carlos Sainz as stuck in 16th after a difficult first "quick" lap before moving up into 8th, telling his team "Let's stay calm".

6 minutes from the end Verstappen rectified the situation at the top and moved up to the top of the timing sheet., still on the same set of hard tyres. Pierre Gasly soon came close to beating that time, slotting into second at 0.085s.

The continuously improving times were testimony of the improving track conditions. Zhou jumped to the top 2 minutes from the end just before cars queued up in the final sector to get a late and clear flying lap in.

Hamilton only just managed to save it for Mercedes by jumping from 17th to 7th. Sargeant had to apologise to his Williams team for screwing up the chicane and ending up in 20th while George Russell couldn't believe he ended up 18th. Last year's pole sitter blamed traffic, and indeed, while preparing his flying lap he was passed by another car in the final corner, forcing Russell to complete his lap closer to the car ahead than he would've liked.

AlphaTauri returnee Daniel Ricciardo just made it through, 11 hundredths ahead of Albon in 16th and 13 hundredths ahead of his own team mate, Yuki Tsunoda.

Medium tyres were fitted to the remaining 15 cars and Q2 kicked off with McLaren soon emerging on top of the timing sheet with Norris topping Piastri by 0.243 seconds after Max Verstappen had his time annulled for track limites. Stroll similarly had to start over after going across the white line with all 4 wheels.

After everyone had returned to the pits to get a fresh set of mediums, Verstappen emerged from the pits to reap benefits from the completely empty track. The Dutchman was fastest in the first sector and put himself in second place and quickly returned to the pits after this single flying lap.

Stroll, also in trouble was out slightly later with his lap insufficient to get through into Q3. Gasly, Ocon and Sainz all enjoyed nice first sectors on their final attempts but then faded off, leading them all to be eliminated. Sainz for instance ended up 11th, missing out just 0.002 second to Fernando Alonso.

Hamilton though improved to second in the closing stages of Q2 while Norris was watching from the sidelines as he was pretty certain of making it through with that earlier single timed lap. Bottas was again impressive with 4th as Zhou also made it through with the 9th best time.

Sergio Perez kicked off Q3 by completing a lap of the Hunaroring in 1:17.238. Lando Norris crossed the line half a minute later and topped that easily while Alonso later snuck in between them. Verstappen did better still with Hamilton becoming the closest challenger as he was the last to complete his first attempt in Q3.

Leclerc was 6th and only a few hundredths ahead of Valtteri Bottas.

The second flurry of laps was started by Leclerc but ended up in an underwhelming 6th place after a disappointing final sector. Nearly everybody improved however and Verstappen has sights on yet another pole until Lewis Hamilton, again last on track crossed the finish line and took pole position for Mercedes by 0.003s despite losing more than a tenth in the final sector.

Sergio Perez meanwhile didn't crash out of qualifying this time, but was again more than 0.4s off of his team mate and therefore only 9th on tomorrow's starting grid.